I’m Going to Run a Marathon. Kill Me. Kill Me Now.

What on earth was I thinking?! Well, I wasn’t thinking straight that’s for sure. You see, what happened was that I’d had most of a large glass of homemade cherry wine. It was totally delicious, but we have no idea how strong it is. It smells pretty alcoholic. So, most of the way through said glass, my running-obsessed friend called me for a general chat. The conversation always turns to running at some point or other, and she said: ‘Hey, how about doing a marathon next year?’ To which I tipsily replied: ‘Yeah, that sounds good, let’s do it!’ Dumbass.

It was only the next day when it sunk in. I’ve promised to run a marathon next year. Twenty-six bloody miles! Nope, 26.2! WTF did I do that for?! Well, that drunken conversation was seven weeks ago exactly; as a woman of my word, I could not back out. To tell the truth, it is something I’d planned to do when I started running again in 2012. I only cancelled it back then because I got pregnant after a few months and couldn’t run. Unfortunately, I’ve not really run since, other than a few times last Summer. So I’ve basically been doing almost no exercise. Some months ago, I started doing “7 minute workouts” which are apparently meant to be pretty good for you, but they’re not exactly enough to get you in marathon shape.

So I dutifully re-downloaded the Nike+ Run Club to my phone. I’ve tried a few other apps in the past and they were a bit crap in various ways. The Nike+ Run Club gives you a nice interface and social connections. It’ll map your run (if you want it to) and give you a plan (if you want it to) and all sorts of other stuff – again if you want it to, it’s so customisable. It’s also dead easy to use and the interface is clean and simple. So I signed up to the ‘Getting Started’ plan. Somehow or other during this time, I’d also signed up to some kind of tennis fitness bootcamp. It was only an hour a week, so I thought it would probably be ok.

So seven weeks on and I’m not dead. I have also managed to not break myself in any way, although there have been days when I thought I would not be able to lift my left leg/rotate my left foot/move my right thigh ever again. Luckily, the next day I was okay again. All those seven minute workouts must have stood me in good stead, as I’ve been doing 5-6 days of exercise per week. Sometimes very light, sometimes hard.

I am now quite excited about booking races and that sort of thing. In fact, I’ve already booked my first Half Marathon, which will be in Berlin in April 2018. I love running there, it’s one of my favourite cities in the world and it’s almost entirely flat, so it’s a pretty fast course. I’m going to book a few 5Ks, 10Ks, and probably 1-2 more half marathons in the UK and I’ve entered the ballot for the London Marathon! Although to be honest, I kind of don’t want to get a place as it’s two weeks after the Berlin Half… that’s a helluva lot of running in the space of a couple of weeks.

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